Damaged
by callie rawston
Summary: Now a three - parter, reflections of Jed, Kate and Warren on the reasons behind Kate's behaviour
1. Jed

**Okay, for the record I have no idea why I wrote this other than that it was whirling through my mind all day. I should have been writing Casualty fanfic, but hey I thought I would try something a little different. This is just a short little one shot in honour of Kate and Jed from Bedlam. **

**Dedicated to Anny, for understanding that when something is in your head you do just have to write it - even when it is 2:30am and you should really be asleep. **

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**Damaged**

Jed rolled over and glanced up with dismay at the clock on the wall of the tiny box room that had become his place of residence since his recent arrival at Bedlam Heights. It concerned him that for the fourth time in no more than a week it was 4am and Kate was still not curled up asleep in her room where she should be. In the short time he had been back in her world he had started to grow used to her erratic behaviour but even by her standards rolling in at dawn on an almost daily basis seemed peculiar and he was surprised that Uncle Warren had yet to pull his daughter up for how shocking she looked when she stalked into their office each morning ever more sleep deprived. However if he gave it any real thought he was sure that whilst his uncle might be present each day, his mind was definitely elsewhere and although Warren probably spent more time with Kate than almost anyone else Jed was certain the man never really saw the girl his daughter had grown up to be.

He wasn't sure what concerned him the most actually; that Kate seemed so intent on self-destruction that she was recklessly picking up men as if they were toys before falling apart all over Molly each subsequent morning or that he couldn't shake the odd sensation that it was being back in this awful building with the horrendous past it contained that was somehow causing her to act so provocatively. Jed reflected back on the girl he had grown up with and the innocent connection they had once shared before his own demons had threatened to overwhelm them both. He knew that sending him away for treatment had been done more to keep him away from her than it had been about getting him well but Jed had understood the situation well enough to be aware that the intensity of the bond they had shared had been far too much for the vulnerable girl to handle when things had started to spiral out of control.

They had been each other's first, although that night had never been spoken of since, and regardless of how many girls there had been in the intervening years, Jed knew that Kate would always be his one and even now she was the only girl who ever kept him awake at night, be it with fear for her or desire to replace whoever it was within whose arms she currently slept. That she was his cousin, technically or not, had never come into it for him as it had done for their parents but that despite what Kate had seen in her past she still stubbornly refused to accept his visions as anything other than fantasy always did. Every snide comment she had made about his ghosts felt like a betrayal of their history together after all that had gone on, but in the many sleepless nights he had subjected himself to waiting for her to come home in these last seven days he had taken time to wonder whether her denial could more correctly be attributed to fear of what she knew she would find if she looked than it was that she did not want to see at all.

The rattle of keys striking the lock and the sound of footsteps in the living room grabbed Jed's attention instantly, pulling him from his thoughts and causing him to jump out of bed with a view to checking on Kate's current state of mind. However before he could open his bedroom door he heard the sound of objects breaking and an unfamiliar male voice say her name with a fervour that he recognised without hesitation. He placed his hand on the door handle and slowly pulled it open; allowing his eyes to adjust to the light of the room in contrast to the darkness of his own confined space.

In the seconds that followed he took in the unfolding scene in front of him with dismay as he watched the stranger undressing his cousin's body frantically as she kissed him with a passion Jed found difficult to observe, yet powerless to tear his gaze away from. The couple were practically atop the dining room table locked together so tightly in an embrace it appeared to him that they had melded into one mass of desire, but it was as he heard Kate moan out in pleasure as her companion explored every inch of her that she tipped her head back and Jed found himself staring into the eyes of the girl he had once fallen in love with against all the rules.

He felt time stand still momentarily as despite the man's continued lust-filled assault on her body, Kate appeared stubbornly focused on him standing half-dressed in the doorway of his room and in spite of his outward confidence Jed found himself feeling exposed under the darkness of her glare. After what felt like a lifetime, but may have been no more than a few seconds, he noticed that the bloke who had appeared totally immersed in ravaging the beautiful woman realise that she was no longer responding and looked up to see why she had been distracted.

"Who is this?" the man asked with what seemed to be a mixture of horror and embarrassment at being caught making out on someone's table.

"The lodger," Jed heard Kate respond as he simultaneously answered, "Her cousin," which he could only assume he had stated to give the stranger an indication that he had a valid right to be concerned over his behaviour towards the woman who was still studiously watching him as if her life depended on it. Within less than a minute and with no further words being spoken Kate's date fled the room and Jed considered that throughout that time the girl in question had made no attempt to even acknowledge his exit or try to cover herself up in any way.

As the door slammed shut behind the stranger Kate finally glanced away and Jed felt himself physically relax at no longer being under the scrutiny of such an intense stare. He watched with interest as she sat up, pulling her opened blouse around her and straightening her skirt from its scrunched up position at the top of her thighs before she stood up to face him.

He had no time to act before Kate crossed the room at speed and came to a halt inches away from his position, totally focused on his eyes yet her own facial expression seeming completely unreadable. She leant up and kissed his cheek, just touching the corner of his mouth with her own as she did so before pulling back to assess his reaction. Jed could feel every part of him screaming in desperation at wanting to respond to her warmth but he held himself immobile in anticipation of what she may do next.

He did not have to wait long for an answer, with her reaching up and placing one hand behind his head as she captured her mouth with his own in a kiss which he found himself incapable of preventing his lips from reacting to. His arms instinctively wrapped themselves around her back as he pulled her closer, drawing himself deeper into the hunger Kate was emitting with every single touch. However it was as he felt her hand move to the waistband of the jogging bottoms he had chosen to sleep in, dropping her hand from her blouse as she did so and allowing his chest to feel the heat of her bare skin on his own that an overwhelming sense of sadness hit him.

The look of confusion on Kate's face burned through him as he pushed her off him, but having just spied her about to get intimate with a complete stranger on the dining room table Jed knew that he was not about to be used by this girl to scratch an itch he doubted had more to do with her desire to feel loved than it did about their own connection. He wanted her more desperately than he had ever needed anyone else or than she would ever comprehend, but he had come here to save her not to destroy her further with his own selfish wish to pursue this further that night.

He held her at arms lengths, gripping her shoulders firmly to hold her still despite her struggle to get away and tried with every part of him to focus on her face rather than the barely dressed body that was below it. The emptiness in her eyes spooked him far more than any ghost he had ever known and in Kate's all Jed could see was the damage a lifetime of never feeling secure in anyone's affections had done to her. He remembered how a young Kate had once trustingly confided in him that all she wanted was to be important to someone and his response had been to meet her lips with his own before pushing her gently back onto her bed in the only demonstration of real love he had ever felt able to give. Jed knew he had spent his entire life reflecting on the damage being adopted into the Bettany family had done to him, but now standing here semi-dressed holding Kate in his grasp he wondered why he hadn't before seen that she was far more damaged by this family than he would ever be, silently questioning whether the responsibility for this laid more with himself or Uncle Warren for their indifferent treatment of her over the years.

"Your loss," Kate snapped bitterly, shaking herself out his touch before placing her own hand on his chest fleetingly until she stormed off into her room and slammed the door shut behind her. Jed looked down at the patch of skin where her fingers had seconds before scorched his skin, feeling the electricity from that charged moment even after her departure from the space.

"I don't know what's worse," Molly's voice came from across the room and Jed snapped his head round to see their sleepy flatmate watching him from the doorway to her own room. "That you stopped her getting hurt or that you then hurt her yourself," she continued with a sigh. "Either way it will be me that has to pick up the pieces in the morning as usual, only when it involves you it is never that simple."

"Molly," Jed started to respond, but found himself cut off.

"No. Do you have any idea what it is like to watch someone you love tear themselves apart every single day and know that there is nothing you can do to fix it?" Molly responded and Jed wordlessly acknowledged that he did, glancing in the direction of Kate's bedroom door to demonstrate his understanding. "Then why?" she questioned, pleading with him to give her an answer. "Kate might come across as confident, a bit of a bitch sometimes even, but we both know that it's just a front and right now you're making it worse," Molly concluded before quickly fleeing back into the sanctuary of her own room, with Jed able to tell from her tone quite how difficult that had been for her to say to him.

From behind him he heard his phone bleep repeatedly but he didn't bother to answer it. He knew that each message would just instruct him to "Save Kate" or inform him that he would be incapable of doing just that, but right now he wasn't sure whether he needed to save her from the spooky horrors of her home, from her father or from her own connection with him. All Jed knew for certain was that the girl he had once innocently made love to aged sixteen was long since gone, Kate having been irreparably damaged when they had been torn apart and for that reason if nothing else he knew that it was her time to face her own ghosts, whomever they may turn out to be.

With that in mind he returned to his bed, positioning himself so that he lay sprawled across the covers, feeling far too overheated to require the added warmth of a duvet or sheets. He stretched one hand out to pull the familiar item from underneath his mattress before holding it up in front of his eyes. The photograph was crumped from frequently being moved from hiding place to hiding place but even through the murky darkness Jed could make out the crystal clear image of Kate taken not long after his arrival at Bedlam some weeks before. He held the photo to his chest and shut his eyes, taking comfort from its presence in his fingertips as he finally began to drift off into sleep.

"You can't save Kate," came the whisper of a female voice in his ear causing his eyes to spring open instantaneously to find not even a ghostly being by his side. "You can't save Kate from herself."

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**So thank you for reading, yes it was a random little one-shot but that is where my mind was at tonight!  
Please read and review, am considering writing more Bedlam fanfic as love Jed/Kate but thought I would start with something short first of all!**

**Promise will update other fics soon!**

**Callie x**


	2. Warren

**So I know I said this was a one-shot, but there are just so many reasons why it turned out not to be. There is now a Warren part (this one) and another part coming soon. This has a slightly different tone to even what I was expecting as I wrote it, but please bear with it - the last part will attempt to offer some more explanation I promise.**

**Written for Anny, just because. **

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**Damaged**

Warren leant back in his chair and stared at the empty desk across the room from his own in the half-light of the table lamp, totally lost in thoughts of his daughter and unable to shut his mind off for long enough to resort to sleep regardless of it already being past 4am. He gulped down the contents of the glass tumbler clutched tightly in his hand before reaching forward to refill it with the whisky that had been a present from their most recent apartment buyer just a few days before. Despite the gift being more suited to his own taste than hers, the commission itself had been Kate's, as even in these difficult times with properties stubbornly refusing to sell Warren knew that he could guarantee his daughter would always manage to make a few sales based purely on how she presented herself to the young, up and coming men who the stylishly designed flats seemed to appeal to.

He winced as the cool alcoholic liquid burned down the back of his throat once more whilst he wondered whether allowing her to behave the way she did could be considered exploitation, before deciding not even to allow his mind to follow that particular trail of thought. He recalled with hesitation how just fifteen minutes before he had been standing watching the overpowering darkness outside the building from the window of his office when he had witnessed his little girl falling out of a taxi and into the main building draped over yet another stranger, the fourth different man she had come home with this week alone if he was correct in his observations.

Warren glanced back towards his computer before flicking one of the keys to reawaken the screen from standby and studied the moving images that were playing out in front of his eyes. The sweet smile of a very young Kate, aged approximately five or six years old, stared back out at him from the monitor, dancing around the garden at the back of the asylum, apparently finding being around her daddy that day a great place to be. He thought back to how he had ordered Ryan to finally do something useful in lieu of rent by putting all of the old videos and DVDs that were cluttering up his own house onto a single disc and how on nights like this, it comforted him to watch them back and remind himself of the innocent little girl his daughter had once been before she had been so very deeply scarred by events.

Warren knew that he had always been an overprotective father, in fact Kate had light-heartedly told him off for as much on more than one occasion over the years, but he more than most was well aware of the horrors that could await such a beautiful girl out in the harsh reality of the world. However despite his lack of choice in his need to defend her from being harmed, he knew that regardless of whatever happened his perfect little girl would always be his princess. He had once naively believed that she would never be able to do any wrong in his eyes, realising far too late that sometimes a person really cannot see what is occurring right in front of them, but for that fact alone he was sure that she had been punished more than ever would have been necessary. Warren also knew well enough that if he actually challenged her over her recent behaviour, staying out all night with highly unsuitable men and being too tired to stay awake at her desk, Kate would be devastated to see his own disappointment in her and would stop immediately, yet somehow he could not bring himself to approach her to discuss it. It was almost as if that despite his deeply held disapproval over her actions he could sense that she found behaving so recklessly cathartic and therefore for as long as she was unaware of his knowledge of her illicit actions, he would stand back and let her continue as illogical and inappropriate as that seemed even to him.

The young child spinning around and laughing on the screen in front of him had had so much potential to achieve anything she wanted, of that Warren had always been certain from the very day she entered his world. She had been clever, funny, popular and had this ability to light up the room that even he had found all-consuming from right when she was tiny. He had spent her whole life watching people gravitate towards Kate, seeming desperate to be in her inner circle and bask in her limelight, yet somehow along the way he was sure that this had been spoilt, as whilst he would still describe her in exactly the same way, those traits no longer seemed as positive when used alongside her name. Moreover from the complaints he frequently received from the wives of married residents, he had also heard her called manipulative, cold and calculating, a description he could still not square off against the gap toothed smile of the blonde haired child prancing around in the asylum's graveyard all those years before.

Warren reflected on quite why such an incredibly strong and determined young woman as Kate had ended up right back where she started, having left him once before to go away to university and yet inexplicably heading straight back to the old asylum she had once played in as a child as soon as that experience had ended. He knew that over the years he too had tried to escape the lure of the place on more than one occasion, but something had always pulled him back in and it seemed that sense of belonging he felt was one of the very few characteristics he recognised he shared with his own child. It had been his own decision to ask her back to project manage the redevelopment of Bedlam Heights, yet even in spite of that it felt unfamiliar to him, as if it had been made by someone else and foisted upon them regardless of the consequences.

To Warren it seemed that there was something in the spirit of the place that had seemed to trap her, determined to keep her close by his side and unable to see that there was a world outside the four walls of the old asylum that she could be exploring. Selfishly he had felt an overwhelming sense of relief when she had returned from university and declared an interest in his project to rebuild their family's past, mainly because it had meant he would not have to lose Kate to someplace else, or more importantly to someone else, at least for a time. Nevertheless he had always known it wasn't healthy for her to be present within the confines of such a place for too long and whilst he had felt reasonably safe in offering her the job, her insistence and childish pleading that she be allowed to live in the first apartment to be fully renovated was one that he knew he should have instantly turned down. However saying no to any request of his daughter's was something Warren had always struggled with, except when her question had been on the topic of her mother or the realities of the business her grandfather had been involved in, as even he knew that some concepts were better off left to the imagination.

That he would willingly permit her to reside in a place that had caused their family nothing but pain and anguish, in spite of the outward display of pride he demonstrated in their past, felt nonsensical to Warren, but then again he still could not comprehend what had ever possessed him to bring his little girl, and sometimes Jed as well, to such an imposingly authoritative building in the first place. He had allowed them as children to treat the place as their own personal playground, encouraged it even, despite knowing full well the fact that they could have stumbled across something awful behind any of the locked doors. If ever there was a building that had skeletons in its closet, Bedlam Heights was most certainly it.

Warren watched with interest as an expressionless Jed appeared behind Kate on the computer monitor, the picture flickering slightly as he did so, and Warren recalled how back then the boy had been his cousin's silent shadow, afraid of the world around him and too scared to communicate with anyone that wasn't his mother or Kate. The two children on the screen made eye contact with each other and Warren found himself leaning forward to study their behaviour, wondering whether even back then the signs of their imminent closeness had been present. He was rewarded with the sight of the briefest flicker of something in the children's eyes and he found himself contemplating how they had never really needed words to talk, identifying that in their family the golden rule had always appeared to be that some things were best left unsaid. That this had led quite so drastically to his own father's actions and his own distinct lack of questioning of them did not sit comfortably with him, regardless of what others may one day say but the impact his own inability to talk through the important issues in life with his daughter appeared to have had on her caused him to curse himself for the pain he had caused.

The DVD playing out in front of him jumped forward in time seemingly at will and came to pause on an image of a teenage Kate and Jed sprawled out across the sofa together, with her totally focused on the boy, but his eyes fully detached from the room in which they were relaxing in, which Warren instantly recognised had been taken in the weeks preceding the male teen's breakdown. He recalled how close his daughter had always been to the boy who was not really her cousin and how incredibly uncomfortable he had found it to be around their inappropriately intense connection, even though he knew that Kate had only ever seen Jed as not being family due to Warren's own insistence that genetics meant he was nothing of the sort.

The day he had found the two of them curled up asleep together under the covers of a hospital bed in one of the old wards of the asylum when they should have been in school had been horrendous and Warren found himself reaching once again for the nearly drained whisky bottle as he remembered the moment he had spied his daughter's crumpled school uniform strewn across the floor as if it had been hastily removed. She may have already been sixteen, but in his eyes at least his innocent child had that day been corrupted by a boy so disturbed that he had been seeing ghosts since before he could talk.

Warren recalled how the anger had filled him completely and threatened to hurl itself out of him as he had begun to storm over to the bed, fully prepared to drag his nephew out of the asylum and their lives forever after giving him the beating of his life for taking advantage of his sort of cousin. However before he had gotten close enough to lay hands on Jed for his actions, his sleeping daughter had begun to stir in her sleep in obvious distress as she struggled to deal with nightmares not of her own making. He had wanted to run to her side to offer her comfort, but had felt powerless to intervene as her anguish had worsened and she had lashed out, striking Jed hard across the chest as she did so. Warren reflected on how the young lad had sensed her fear despite himself only being semi-conscious with sleep and had drawn her in closer to him, before she had pushed him away and started shaking like a leaf. From his position far across the room Warren knew he had remained hidden from their view but he had witnessed with his own eyes the unedifying sight of Jed being forced to pin Kate to the bed as she shook in terror before he had kissed her to try and absolve her of pain.

Warren knew that it had been that night that something inside him had finally snapped about the younger male's dominance of his daughter's life, having sensed that in losing her to him he had somehow failed to keep her safe and that therefore he bore some responsibility alongside Jed for the traumatised state she had ended up being locked in. Regardless that night he had left Kate asleep once again in Jed's arms as he had headed into town, finding a bar to get drunk in and a young woman to get drunk with, in a strained attempt to free himself from the abject fear he had recognised in his daughter's features when she had awoken with such a fright. He had not come home for two days afterwards, but when he had returned he had arranged for Jed to be dispatched to the hospital a mere matter of hours later, citing the bruises on Kate's arms that neither teen had been able to explain away as evidence of Jed posing a danger to those around him, but it had been Kate's silently streaming tears as the police car had escorted him away that had proven to Warren he had done the right thing in separating the two of them before they became ever closer and she got even more hurt by the intensity of his presence.

The sound of running footsteps down below the window caused Warren to rise from his seat and he studied the sight of Kate's apparent one night stand disappearing into the night with confusion, glancing at the clock and realising that his departure had come far too quickly even by her standards. He felt certain that the presence of his nephew in her flat would have had something to do with it, although he was unsure if he should be grateful for Jed's interference to protect her from making a mistake or annoyed that she had allowed him back into her life to such an extent that he was impacting on her behaviour in the first place.

Warren had always been proud that his family had always been the ones with the keys to the asylum, rather than being the inpatients on the other side of the bars, and it was this that had made Jed's behaviour as an adopted member of their contingent so very disappointing to him but strangely unsurprising given the boy's biological parentage. Yet that Kate appeared every bit as much in need of help as the young man who seemed to want nothing more than to be by her side scared Warren the most, as knowing what he did about the asylums ability to mess with the minds of those too screwed up to see it, he could not fathom why he had never before really spotted how damaged his daughter truly was.

From his vantage point by the window he noticed the picture on the computer screen change in the reflection in the glass and he glanced back at it, to be confronted with a picture of Kate taken very recently apparently but not one he was familiar with nor one he recognised as being on the DVD when he had played it through every night before. Warren made a mental note to pull the computer geek his daughter had a soft spot for up over the PC's tendency to skip out the sections he actually anticipated being able to enjoy watching and replacing them with random photographs from the hard drive instead.

He moved to stand by the desk, reaching his hand out to touch the image of his smiling child that filled the entirety of the screen. Warren wondered exactly when it had been taken and what precisely had made her so happy, as he could not recall the last time he had witnessed her smile in a way that reached her eyes. The window at the front of the office rattled loudly before springing open unexpectedly, filling the room momentarily with a howling wind before Warren managed to reach out and pull it closed. However as he did he swore that he could hear the whispers of a voice in the wind calling out his Kate's name. He secured the window latch once more before turning around to look back at the unfamiliar picture, but by then the screen had gone black once more and he found himself praying that he had heard the whispering on the wind wrong.

Warren settled back into the chair of the desk, landing heavily as he did so and drained the remaining dregs of whisky straight from the bottle. He could not recall the last time he had made it home and to bed before dawn in the last few weeks since Jed had arrived in town, preferring instead to step up his nightly ritual of monitoring his daughter's behaviour, watching her and waiting for something to happen to the damaged young woman, wondering if this time he would actually be able to rescue her or whether it was he himself that might be causing her the most harm.

He reached down and opened the usually locked drawer of his desk that was so filled with DVDs he was certain he would need to find alternative storage for his collection in the near future. He ejected the disc currently in the computer and placed it back inside a case marked "Kate childhood", before carefully slotting it back between two DVD cases that were headed up "Corridor A" and "Graveyard", once again finding himself pleased at the top of the range security system that he had had Ryan help him install, even if so far it had failed to prevent any crimes occurring and instead had only managed to enable him to spend his early mornings stalking his daughter through the corridors of Bedlam Heights on the very rare occasions she slept enough to start walking about.

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**Okay so I admit some of that was a little weird, but this is what happens when I am deprived of sleep I fear. There will be one more part to this, from Kate's perspective, and that should be up in a couple of days. **


	3. Kate

**So, my one-shot became a three-parter and therefore here it ends, with Kate determined to have her say on events. I hope you enjoy it.**

**Dedicated to Anny, for being there and encouraging me to write at ridiculous hours than no human should ever be awake at!**

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**Damaged**

Kate blinked rapidly as the light streaming through her curtains finally made it unbearable to continue to stare unseeing straight ahead before dragging herself back round so she was lying on the bed and pulled the quilt up over her head. She knew from the position of the sun against her window that it must be coming up for a civilised waking time and therefore it had been yet another night of sleep deprivation, a state that was rapidly becoming her norm. She was fairly certain that she had finally arrived home from a night of drunken silliness about four hours ago before Jed had so rudely interrupted proceedings on the dining room table but whilst that had been a somewhat unexpected development, the fact that she had been sitting on her bed motionless since 4am came as less of a shock.

From her position in the self-imposed darkness under her stylish but impractical choice of bedcovers Kate reflected on how after the intervention her cousin come lodger had subjected her to she had paced back and forth across her carpeted floor for a short while, angrier than she had felt in days but with a strange sense of coldness drawing in around her from losing the touch of both her late night companion and then Jed in such quick succession. She knew that she had been a little tipsy when she had invited the man she had met merely a couple of hours previously back to her apartment for the inevitable, but then if she had not been drinking she doubted she would have gone there at all, not least because he was the fourth man she had brought back to the flat in a week and she reflected with a heavy heart that she really was living up to other people's sluttish expectations of her these days.

Jed intervening had been a new slant on proceedings though, of that she was certain and whilst his presence at the doorway of his room studying her intently had been a welcome one, she couldn't help but hate him for filling her with hope in letting their kiss escalate before dashing her expectations all over again. In truth she had not been sure why he was even awake, as if he had been listening out for her he had failed to make his presence known on any of the previous occasions she had behaved so very badly. She recalled that he had looked tired and drawn around the eyes, like someone who had been up for days rather than a person who had been woken by the sound of her swiping the contents of the dining room table onto the floor as she succumbed to a passionate encounter. Kate knew that spending all night out in town was for her a distraction from her own complete inability to sleep anymore, especially with him so close by, but she doubted that he was inflicted so similarly with thoughts of her. Although she considered to herself, the electricity between them had definitely intensified over the last couple of weeks since his return and she allowed herself to briefly wonder quite what had run through Jed's mind when he saw her barely dressed and making out with someone that was not him right in front of his eyes.

Kate thought back to the man who had laid his hands across her as she dragged him down onto the table and silently questioned whether she could even remember what he looked like, never mind his name. In fact all she could really recall about the man she had been about to become so intimately familiar with and someone she had brought back into her apartment, never mind that she knew nothing about him, was that she was certain he had been wearing a wedding ring when he first met her in the bar. That was not something she was particularly concerned about however as from her own experience married men tended to be much more open to a meaningless one night stands with no lasting consequences than their single counterparts.

Kate remembered how the two of them had stumbled out of a taxi in the darkness outside Bedlam Heights before she had slammed him backwards into the wall that surrounded the building and kissed him with a ferocity that had even surprised herself. It had been as she released him and dragged him towards the entrance of the apartment block that she had glanced up and spied her dad watching her from the window above, drowning himself in drink and being the ever present witness to her behaviour. She knew that his presence in their office in the middle of the night and his knowledge of her antics was something that neither of them had so far found the words or the courage to raise, but there was something that depressed her and creeped her out in equal measure that her father could bear to see her tearing herself apart in search of something even he must have realised she could never find and that he had so far stood motionless to prevent her from spiralling further out of control.

She reflected that she was unsure whether his inaction was due to a lack of care over her welfare or that he cared too much so he was not allowing himself to see what was really going on, but all Kate had ever wanted from this man was that he notice her. She had come back from university to work alongside him purely to give herself a chance to prove herself in her daddy's eyes but all she had so far achieved was disappointing herself that he seemed far from bothered by her achievements. Regardless of how successful she had been in selling apartments for him, it appeared to her that her father could only see her as the little girl she had once been, a child she knew who had been nothing more than an innocent who wanted to be her daddy's special princess, following him around and helping him with his work. Even then she recalled that he had always left her to her own devices though, her and Jed growing up alone in the shadow of an old asylum that it must have been apparent to the adults in their lives was no place to be a playground for two inquisitive but troubled children.

The whole world had been their oyster back then, but Kate knew circumstances had conspired against them both to tie them to this building forever and despite her acknowledgement that it had not been her father's fault Bedlam Heights had so many memories for her, she could not forgive him for not seeing how inappropriate it was to allow her to become so obsessed with putting right the wrongs of the past through creating something new from the wreckage of her family's old hospital. Her relationship with her dad had always been tainted by the events that had unfolded in the asylum both in her lifetime and those that had gone before, but it hurt more than she could comprehend that she seemed to matter enough for him to be bothered about but not enough for him to show he actually loved her, something that was never more obvious to her than when he failed to prevent her from using every ounce of her feminine charms to secure a sale no matter how cheap that act made her feel. Kate doubted that Jed would ever permit a daughter of his behave in such a manner, but then something about the thought of him with a child disturbed her more than she could begin to admit.

Kate pulled herself out from under the suffocating warmth of the blanket that had weighed down heavily on her and she could hear the sounds of people pottering around in the kitchen making breakfast, Ryan and Molly if she could pick out their voices correctly, although she acknowledged that Jed may also be present because as the man seemed to spend most of his life in a perpetual silence of not needing to speak it made it difficult for her to ever tell if he was still present in her apartment most of the time. She wondered what Molly and Ryan made of her behaviour in recent weeks, as she knew that not only was her relationship history becoming more and more complex with every passing day, they must also have concerns over the increasingly strange array of men who she was parading through their home on an ever increasing basis. She knew without question that despite her chequered past her choice of conquests had only become quite so erratic since she had moved into Bedlam Heights, right where that very first night she had spent with Jed had occurred all those years before.

It seemed that whilst she was present in this building there was something about her that felt possessed to always have a poor unsuspecting male under her spell, be that her latest married gym companion, Ryan on occasion or even just a prospective apartment buyer. She could almost feel her provocative behaviour escalating within the confines of the walls of the building, with each encounter she had established ending up as meaningless and disappointing as it was passionate and barely scratching the ever present need she had to feel like she was in control. Kate was self-aware enough to recognise that the force that overtook her felt primal, something that she could not resist and caused her to act on instinct to satisfy an urge that appeared completely overwhelming at times. It was this all-consuming emotion that had forced her on occasion to listen over the years to comments Jed had made over people being haunted, compelling her to question whether there ever was such a thing as possession. Sitting in her room in the cold light of day after a bad night before she found it impossible to bring to mind any semi-rational thoughts as to who she suspected was trapped inside her already screwed up head with her, but the primitive nature of her fervent conquests and her need to feel dominant over men who would otherwise just have ogled her from afar scared her more than she dared to concede even to herself.

Kate knew that in acting the way she did she was searching frantically for a connection that she would never be able to find, but somehow that did not prevent her from wanting to continue looking nonetheless. The intensity of the nights she had spent with Jed over the years still astounded her, especially as in comparison to all that had happened since she knew their bond was unique. She would be the first to admit that there had been many, far too many, liaisons since her first, all undoubtedly with men she had chosen purely on the basis that they either wouldn't care enough about her to stick around or would treat her so very badly that it would wound her deeply, but the simplicity of making it burn that bit more every single morning after one of those nights was a masochistic act that she knew had become a habit. Molly was perhaps the only one who had truly seen her cry over how much her own actions harmed herself, but the tears she cried over her oldest friend's shoulder were nothing in comparison to the pain she had felt the very first time Jed had been ordered to leave. The men and the accompanying tears were a physical manifestation of the empty void that had been present in her life since that particular day and despite the damage she was aware she was inflicting upon herself, somehow it was that pain which made her still feel like she was alive.

Kate recalled the frightened and detached young boy who she had grown up alongside and thought back to all the stories Jed used to tell her as they made their own adventures in the asylum of people from the past, tales which had intrigued but horrified her equally. That he had grown up to become the dark and brooding man she had fallen for in every way had never failed to surprise her, but whilst he had disappeared from her life on far too many occasions over the years she knew that he was the only person apart from her father who had ever made her feel invincible under their gaze, even whilst she was aware she was falling apart being by his side. She struggled to accept him as her cousin, of that she was certain, and she knew that this was a great deal in part to how her father had treated him over the years. Yet despite that he was very much part of her family and all that this stood for, even though she had known that being one of them had been the catalyst that had torn him apart in the end. It was only when she had truly understood what being family had meant, when as a child the words used to describe relationships between people had begun to mean more than just the term itself, that Kate remembered realising her connection with Jed had a special significance beyond that she had with anyone else, outweighing even a biological link with her own father.

She had loved Jed forever, but this has transcended a childhood friendship and teenage crush and become far more superior to her than any of that. Kate could never begin to recount all the intimate details of the day she had given herself to him so completely back when she was sixteen years old, in spite of the fact they were seared onto her consciousness forevermore. She had told him she wanted to feel important to someone, that she wanted to matter and he had demonstrated his love for her in the most perfect of ways. Yet in the midst of their intimate encounter she had felt herself connect with him on a far deeper level, something so intense that she had barely been able to draw breath and the link that had been enabled caused her to see the horrors inside his soul. If Kate had not believed his stories before, she had known then that ghosts were real even though she had spent the past years denying such a thing to be true, because she was well aware that sometimes it was easier to pretend you had never even looked than to try and comprehend what you had actually seen when you had.

The nightmares that her night with Jed had triggered had remained with her throughout her remaining teenage years before disappearing when she had left for university, only to return when she herself headed back to the asylum several years later which was something she knew was far from coincidental. Kate recalled waking up after that first time by Jed pulling her into his arms as the deep rooted fear within her had threatened to snap her in two. She knew like no other person did that it had been witnessing what the simple act of making love to her had done to her mind that had caused Jed to break down completely after their encounter and therefore she had to accept a great deal of the responsibility for her father having him sectioned back then. She had not been able to come up with a suitable explanation for the bruises on her arms, which had been a testament to the coldness that had filled the room when her lover had pinned her down to the bed and tried to coerce her into admitting that she could also see the images that were eternally haunting his thoughts.

Kate remembered the blood curdling scream she had heard, that it was only afterwards she realised had come from her own open mouth, when she had tried to fight away the distressing pictures in her head but it had been her abject denial that she could see what Jed was talking about that had finally convinced him to let go of her arms, seemingly destroyed by the lie she had just told him, even though she was convinced that he would have been able to see it was because she had been too scared to admit the truth, even to him. She remembered that Jed had stopped talking completely after that moment and so when she should have been basking in the glow of her first night in his arms, the two of them had instead spent the night lying side by side but as far apart as physically possible in the narrow hospital bed, before she had dressed and gone to school the next day as if nothing untoward had occurred. Kate had often reflected on whether her dad had actually been aware of all that had gone on between his daughter and adopted nephew that night, but he himself had vanished for a number of days and had only later returned to arrange for the steadfastly mute boy to be sectioned, apparently for Kate's own protection as well as for his own sanity.

Kate stood up from the bed, knowing that she would soon have to face the world outside her closed bedroom door once more after yet another sleepless night and considered that even by most people's standards she looked terrible. The only thing she had been sure of throughout her recent history of erratic one night stands and flings was her looks, as she had the confidence to be able to see that when she put the effort in men seemed to find her alluring, a skill she was using more and more to her advantage with every passing day. However her lack of slumber and her restless spirit was beginning to take its toll on even that part of her and she grumpily rubbed the tear stains from her cheeks and pulled her fingers through her unusually ruffled hair.

The knock on the door beside her made her jump, but when it was opened merely seconds later and she was greeted by the reassuring smile of her closest friend Kate couldn't help but feel slightly better in herself.

"Morning," Molly stated chirpily. "Do you want a coffee? Ryan and I are making breakfast."

Kate found herself nodding wordlessly and following the girl out into the kitchen, barely even noticing that she was still wearing the crumpled clothes she had been dressed in on her return the night before. The first thing she observed was that everything that had been slid onto the floor some hours earlier when Kate's mind had been more focused on getting kicks from her date than domestic arrangements had been carefully replaced atop the table and from the way Ryan had been unable to meet her gaze as she entered the room, she was pretty certain he and Molly had been the ones to clear up the devastation she had left. When Ryan eventually looked in her direction, his uncertain smile at her spoke volumes about what her two flatmates must think about her recent actions and she could not help but wonder whether they actually had any comprehension of how unstable she was in seeking comfort in the arms of other people purely to keep thoughts of the only man she had ever loved from taking over her brain.

From the corner of the room Kate spied Jed appear at his doorway, half-dressed in the same jogging bottoms she had tried unsuccessfully to remove from him hours earlier as she had finally given into her desire only to be rejected. The electricity that surged between them as they locked eyes across the space was there even when they didn't touch and Kate recalled how incredible the sparks had been when she had actually placed her hand on his bare chest and succumbed to a passionate kiss. She had needed him in that one moment and from the way she knew Jed's eyes followed her scantily clad form around the room as she busied herself aiding the others in making a feast for breakfast, she recognised that his need matched her own. The two of them were as damaged and screwed up as each other, perhaps her even more so than him despite popular opinion to the contrary, but then she was just far better at hiding her true self from the world, from everyone who wasn't Jed that is.

After finally dragging her gaze away from him standing motionless in his doorway watching them, Kate glanced up and smiled back at Molly despite being aware that her gesture would not reach her eyes. From the strange look her friend was responding with, Kate knew that the girl had this uncanny knack for understanding that Jed had gotten under her skin even if she was unsure of the full version of events that had led to such relations. Of anyone it was Molly who had borne witness to the passionate and fiery rows that had erupted any time Kate and Jed had been present in the same place for any period, but whilst over the years they had connected intimately on a handful of occasions, with each passing time Kate had felt this insistent need to keep that part of their relationship with Jed a secret and had chosen instead to allow herself to submit to her desires with the one person who really knew what happened inside the blackness of her head, before dealing with the haunting consequences afterwards when he had long since gone.

Being around Jed but being so far away from him was destroying her, if nothing else Kate was certain of that fact. Nevertheless there was something about how he responded to her self-destructive behaviour that she could take courage from even in the darkest part of the night, as if he was a safety net brought back to her to rescue her damaged form before she hit the ground. Kate prided herself on being a strong and independent woman, but if she was honest with herself all she really wanted was for Jed to save her from herself and the ghost of a young child he had placed inside her head that night so many years before, a child she knew was yet to be born but would be destroyed just as quickly by Kate's behaviour as Jed himself had once been and would grow to be even more damaged than she could recognise even possible whilst in their care. She locked eyes with Jed once more before he freed himself from her stare and disappeared into the bathroom, with Kate left feeling a stream of cold air blow across her at the very thought of the horrifying image of their future life together with that child, a depiction that she had never quite been able to forget despite her every effort to prevent it from one day becoming true. To be apart from him had damaged her greatly already, but to be with him and allow the inevitable horrendous legacy that would follow to become reality was something Kate knew neither of them could ever willingly commit to, no matter how much both they, and the building that seemed some days to be their prison, desired nothing more than to let their passion overwhelm them once again.

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**Thank you for reading, reviews always welcome. Callie x**


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